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Writing for Money?

Some writers take a disciplined approach to the craft, dedicating time each day to sit, focus, and create. Others write obsessively, like Jack Kerouac who carried a notebook in his pocket everywhere he went as he had Keats-like moments of reverie that he felt compelled to transcribe while experiencing dirty, realistic, non-Keats-like aspects of life.

Me? Well, the muses haven’t been smiling on me, and no matter how long I sit and focus, I just can’t coerce any creations out of my blinking cursor.

I’ve also been unemployed longer than any of my excuses will carry me. I thought unemployment was going to be a fantastic time for writing because I’d be able to dedicate my entire creative self to the task rather than the dregs available to me after a long day’s work.

For a while, that was the case. I was writing 5-6 blog posts a week for a while, and my fledgling blog was starting to grow. The story I wrote about my brothers and myself garnered far more attention than I thought it would, and people were responding!

Then… nothing. That was it. I’m a one-hit-wonder.

About a week ago, a good friend of mine told me one of her acquaintances was looking for a blog writer, and now I have a writing job. It’s nothing to live on, mind you, but nobody’s ever offered to pay me for my words before.

So far, I’ve written three blogs about how to obtain building and home renovation permits in Calgary, and the first one should be going live any minute. As you can imagine, very little of this writing is creative or inspiring; it’s research and dictation.

However, it forced me to sit, focus, and create. Ideas are coming back to me, and I actually feel like writing them again. Perhaps I’m not a one-hit-wonder. Maybe I was just in a sophomore slump, and I just needed a third alliterative cliché to work me into my writing comeback.